


Loved

by ReminiscentLullaby



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gabriel being a good friend, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, estranged family, treating Nathalie with the love and respect she deserves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:48:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21714832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReminiscentLullaby/pseuds/ReminiscentLullaby
Summary: It's rare that Nathalie has to deal with something personal.When she does, Gabriel always tells her exactly what she needs to hear.
Relationships: Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth & Nathalie Sancoeur, Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth/Nathalie Sancoeur
Comments: 14
Kudos: 102
Collections: GabeNath Book Club and Art Club Server





	Loved

“Is everything okay?”

Nathalie doesn’t know how to respond. Her first instinct is to lie, as unconvinced as she knows he would be by a brisk nod or an emphatic “Yes”, but she finds after a second passes of silence that she can’t even bring herself to give him either of these things. Her lips part and a breath passes between them, but nothing more.

It’s worse that she isn’t looking at him either, nor is she looking at her tablet. Her gaze wavers hesitantly somewhere between them, a space on the floor just ahead of his feet. She can feel his own eyes on her now. He studies her face half-turned downward, somehow unable to raise any higher or tilt any lower than where her line of sight runs straight into the marble tile, tile so polished she can see the reflection of his legs.

“Nathalie?”

By the prompt of her name, she is only able blink and set her brow heavy over her eyes. The grip on her tablet feels weak. The urge to lie comes once again, rising out her lungs and failing to take the shape of words.

That pale reflection on the floor begins to move in her direction, and then his shadow phases into hers.

“What’s happened? Do you feel alright?”

She inhales at the warmth of his touch on her shoulder, gentle and kind, and her eyes close. She can _feel_ the movement of that hand before he can think to make it, feel the way it wants to lift just a few inches to the side of her face. If she waits long enough, it will find its way. She tries to speak, she commands herself to give an answer, any answer.

And then the moment of suspension passes all at once. Her eyes flick open, her head turns up to look into his, she says, “My mother called me last night.”

His face changes as she speaks, and he removes his hand. There is something in the way his fingers remain outstretched for a moment longer than necessary as he returns the hand to his side that eases her just slightly. It’s also in the way his chin angles towards his throat, and his steel blue eyes become just noticeably wider. Nathalie sighs. She sighs because she has remembered that she doesn’t need to be afraid.

“I see,” he replies softly. “Do you want to talk about it?”

She might more readily agree had they ever talked about her family more than once, six years ago, when she had received a phone call in the middle of the workday announcing that her father was dead. Gabriel, after extending his condolences to a vacant-eyed Nathalie, had asked when the funeral was, only to be met with her blunt response of, “Friday. I’m not going.”

And then occurred the first time he had ever seen Nathalie cry, because while he was willing to drop the subject at that moment, she had clearly not been prepared for the re-opening of the old wounds that had dictated her answer. They talked then. They talked for an hour and then they never spoke about it again. There had been a couple other phone calls since the first, and if those had bled through her face just like the one from last night, then he had ignored them.

Not today. Today, he reaches out. Perhaps the difference is the brooch pinned behind the red and white tie which his thumb and forefinger pinch at now. It is easier to shut out other people’s pain when it doesn’t pulse through your own body.

She assesses the weight in her chest, wonders for how much longer she can breathe around it until it turns back into air.

Finally, she says, “Well, there’s not much to talk about.”

Gabriel nods. It’s a subtle movement, looks almost involuntary, but she can read the understanding in his eyes. It prompts her to add–

“She was only telling me that my sister is getting a divorce. That’s it. It’s not even something I could really respond to. It’s not like attending a funeral or visiting a new baby or going to her wedding – I wasn’t invited anyway – so, I suppose it’s nothing.”

Gabriel watches her patiently. Her eyes dart back and forth as she speaks, jumping between his shoulders, which, she realizes, are not rigid as they usually are, but relaxed. His entire frame is solemn, and where her vision chooses at last to land somewhere, it chooses his eyes. They are solemn too, and their color reminds her of a cloud in the early morning, floating against the western sky, where sunlight has yet to reach. They’re cool and quiet and heavy, and with light on her back, they stand sharing a shadow.

“But, you know, it’s _not_ nothing,” she finishes.

“I know,” he murmurs. Gabriel is rarely this quiet. His commanding voice sinks into a pleasant hum. “How do you feel?”

“I feel…” Nathalie inhales and exhales once deeply, and she’s relieved her breath doesn’t shake. It occurs to her that he could probably answer his own question by the emotions swirling around his miraculous. “Angry. And guilty. And alone.”

“Why?”

She wants to answer him because she knows the answer, and because she knows even better that he is the one person she can tell without feeling foolish or breaking in half. It takes a moment, though, only because she has a hard time putting the feelings to words. But there’s nothing left of whatever emotion had paralyzed her earlier. He’s close and she can feel him, and he had turned his voice and his eyes on her, made them soft, made them thoughtful, so they were like a slow hand pressed against glass, wiping away the fog with a gentle swipe.

“I’m angry,” says Nathalie carefully, “because I wish she would stop calling. When she calls to tell me that something has happened, she never expects me to care. And so I am left knowing more about these people I never want to see again, and who never want to see me again, and it reminds me of how isolated I am.”

 _Isolated_. The word prompts him to take a step closer. It’s not enough to close all the distance between them, but a warmth spreads through her body as though she is in his embrace. Once again, she can sense his movements before they happen. She wonders if he knows all her words before they are said.

“I’m guilty,” she continues, “because sometimes I think I should give my mom more credit.”

“Are you sure?”

“At the very least, I might forgive her.” Nathalie sighs. One of her hands releases its tight grip on her tablet, and just as it falls, one of his leaps from his side to take it. She had known he would do that. She had felt the stroke of his thumb across her knuckles a second ago. “But even if I did,” she whispers, “I couldn’t imagine myself in the same room as her again. So it’s easier to wish to never hear from either.”

“Nathalie…”

She’s about to lean into his chest, but it’s not time yet. Instead, holding his hand, she leads him to the sofa. Her legs feel numb. Most of her body is numb but for the places she feels his phantom touch. As she sits, she starts to feel the life return to her, her awareness of the room and of the minutes that had passed since he had asked her if she was okay. The window is great and bright, and her eyes are drawn to the front yard as she feels his eyes fixed on her cheek.

“I wonder how much easier it would be to forget if she stopped calling,” she tells him. “They’re so few and far between anyway. I’m sure I’ve gone _years_ without thinking about them. And then I hear her voice, and on her voice, I hear my sister’s voice, and I probably hear my own. And then every time I speak, I hear the both of them.” Nathalie closes her eyes. “I feel surrounded, but there’s nothing I can do, because they’re not actually there. It’s lonely, you know, fighting an invisible battle with invisible people. You look in the mirror and remember how much time has passed. You’ve aged years without them around and so that age has become the part of your face that feels the most like you. Eventually you stop carrying their voices on yours. They’re gone now, but they were there once. You’re all that’s left. That’s the loneliest feeling in the world.”

She feels his hand on her knee and opens her eyes just as it comes to a rest. When she lifts her gaze to his face she gasps at the sadness staring back at her. Nathalie has half the mind to raise her own touch to his face in hope that it could draw some of that sorrow away, like her fingertips are sponges. It works sometimes. She cannot count them number of times her hands have healed some of his pain, swallowed it into her own skin, left her feeling heavy with his burden and her own, and happy to carry them both.

He knows lonely. Lonely is why he can’t give up. Lonely is why he can’t bear to lose. It’s a fear of never getting back what he once held so dear. When Nathalie soaks it from a trembling hand or a slumped pair of shoulders or the downturned corner of his lips, it turns from fear to knowing. His lonely becomes her lonely, a lonely of never having more than she has now.

She smiles at him, because she used to have less.

“Nathalie,” he whispers. She likes the sound of her name on his breath. But she wishes it could sound any lighter than it does under the weight of his empathy. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she replies. Her hand goes not to his face, but his wrist, eyes drifting to the place they make contact with each other. _Here_ , she thinks, _here is where he is closest_. But she can feel him everywhere. “It’s…hard to talk about them. But you make it easier.” She pauses to run her index finger up and down his forearm in two quick, absent-minded movements. “I’m lucky to have you.”

She is surprised to hear him laugh. It’s a very soft, very short laugh, but it causes her to take her hand away, stare at him in bewilderment. “What?” she asks.

“Nathalie –“ There it is, lighter as she had wished “ – truly, you consider yourself the lucky one?”

“O-of course,” she stammers, blinking at him.

He shakes his head, the smile on his face small and bright. “Oh, my dear, you know I wouldn’t know what to do without you? I’d be simply lost. I assure you it is I that is the lucky one.”

At this, she laughs too, echoing his brevity, his softness. “We don’t have to argue.”

“No,” he says, eyes squinting with amusement, “I suppose we don’t.”

In the silence that follows, they hold each other’s gazes as their short-lived joy melts, ice under the harsh afternoon light leaping at them through the window. Nathalie is warm. She is warm because he is about to reach his arms around her and pull her close. She is about to press her cheek to his ear and fall against his chest. As it happens, she gasps, because her eyes fill very quickly with tears. It’s funny, she thinks, that she knew he would hug her before she knew she would cry. She wonders if he knew she would cry before she knew he would hug her.

Nathalie holds her head up, letting the tears on her face breathe in the coolness existing around the tender warmth of the embrace. Gabriel rubs small circles between her shoulder blades. She can feel the rhythm of his steady breath in the chest pressed against hers.

He saw her cry for the first time six years ago.

This is the second.

They hold each for a few minutes. Nathalie waits to feel the movement of his arms drawing away from her, but they don’t budge. As her own breathing slows, his hug only tightens. She responds by touching the tip of her nose to his jaw, closing her eyes. She hears herself apologize.

“Nathalie, you are not alone.”

“Gabriel…”

“You have me. And I have you. My dear,” he murmurs, pivoting his head so he could say it into her skin, to replace some of the pain she absorbs with a breath of bliss, “You’re my best friend.”

She cries out. The tears come again.

Gabriel presses a chaste kiss to her cheek. “My best friend,” he repeats, stroking her hair. “I love you.”

She can only say it in her head, the _I love you_ back. It would sound too heavy, too unbalanced on her tongue. But she knows he hears it, because that’s when he finally pulls away to smile kindly, to wipe a tear from her face as she chuckles at the light brush of his fingertip on her skin.

Nathalie knows he is about to rise, so he must know she is ready for him to go.

“Let me know if you need anything,” he says as he gets to his feet. He stands there a half a second longer, gazing earnestly, before he goes.

For a minute, she sits. She looks out the window. A fluffy white cloud drifts alone through the sky and by chance passes over the sun. The tears dry on her face. She becomes tired.

Her best friend watches her from the other side of the atelier. She feels his eyes, the way they bounce in a slow and steady pattern between her and his work. He feels her smile though she faces away from him, feels she is ready to stand and continue moments before she knows it herself.

The day is a normal one. Work is as it always is. Nathalie forgets about the phone call.

She feels loved.


End file.
